* NOTE *: Although I discovered this back in the Win9x era it is still applicable today. Most modern flash drives ship with FAT16 as the installed file system. All of the calcualtions below still apply. Reformatting with an alternate file system (FAT23, NTFS, EXT2, ...) will improve storage capacity tremendously unless you are packing large files. However I saw a noticeable improvement in the number of MP3s I could pack with a switch to FAT32. So read on to find out why...
If you're like me you've probably asked yourself this question. You have this nice large hard drive and yet you seem to run out of space quickly. Have you ever tried to find the missing space?
I have Windows 95 on my machine and I can quickly check the space used by any directory by "right-clicking" it and choosing properties. The properties dialog quickly sums up all the space used in a set of subdirectories. Yet if I used this feature to sum up all the space used it does not equal the space that ScanDisk or ChkDsk say that I've used.
The answer is really pretty simple. Dos or Windows allocates space based on a cluster. The size of a cluster dictates the minimum amount of space a file on your drive can take up. The size of a cluster goes up with the size of your hard drive. It starts at 2k and works it's way up. On my 1.2 gig hard drive the cluster size is 32k.
Now let's think about this a second. If I create a 300 byte batch file and a cluster is 32k then my batch file will take up one cluster. One cluster however is 32k. This means that 32,468 bytes are wasted. It's a good thing that most of my files aren't that small. If they were I would experience a 99% space wastage, or my 1.2g hard drive would only store around a 120 meg. Simply stated I could go buy a 120meg hard drive and and replace my 1.2 gig hard drive with it and experience a drive that is identical in capacity. That's pretty startling!
The good news: Most files are larger than 300 bytes so the space wastage isn't that severe. Let's look at another situation. Let's say that I have a file that is 33k. Dos will have to allocate two clusters to fill the needs of this file. This means that this file would take up 64k, wasting 31k. As the size of the file goes up the wastage isn't as bad.
You might be asking yourself, "How does this affect me?" I have seen, on larger drives (1+gig), wastage of space around 60% when running Windows 95. Windows 95 is probably the worst at wasting space. The reason being, all the cool little shortcuts. Windows 95 saves all the icons on the start menu, and anywhere else, in a shortcut file. Most of these are less than 1k.
This problem also extends itself to subdirectories. A subdirectory has to adhere to the same cluster rules. Going back to the 32k cluster a Dos subdirectory has to have 1024 files in it before it is using the space allocated. Windows 95, once again, uses more space for long name storage. This means that you can actually have fewer entries and use up that 32k. Windows 95 submenus on the start menu are subdirectories on your hard drive, so this becomes more of a factor.
Some more good news: Smaller drives are more efficient with storage space. Because the cluster sizes are an even power of two (2k, 4k, 8k, 16k, 32k, ...), a slightly smaller drive can sometimes gain an incredible improvement in efficiency.
What can be done to get more space? Partition your drive! It's not an easy thing but it can be done. Those of you with hard drives smaller than 300 meg just need to get a larger drive. For the rest of us there is a way to get more space from our existing drive. Dos/Windows allows a drive to be split into pieces, known as partitions. If you break a 1 gig hard drive into partitions around 500 meg you will go from 32k cluster to 8k clusters, a four times increase in efficiency!
My hard drive is now in three partitions. After backing up everything on my system, reformatting and restoring, I went from a drive that was full to one that had an enormous amount of free space. I didn't loose any of my installed programs!
The procedure of repartitioning isn't easy and it is extremely time consuming. Those of you who know how to do it, go for it! Those of you who don't should consult a local professional, probably at a local service center. You may even want them to do it for you.
Notes:
- If you have Windows 95b you should use Fat 32 instead.
- Partitioning is a potentially dangerous process!
- I never recommend using disk compression software.
- They consume system time compressing and decompressing.
- They make systems unstable.
- They make the file system on a hard drive more fragile.
- There are third party programs that make it easier.
